Brendan Kelly

What’s wrong with the Pens

The Penguins finished the season in a comfortable 4th place in the East, with their playoff opponents the Philadelphia Flyers finishing 5th and going into the playoffs as the underdog. A lot of people including me were expecting the Pens to crush the Flyers, with 2012 Art Ross Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin and superstar Sidney Crosby who had just returned from a serious concussion.

Crosby recorded 8 goals, 29 assists, and a total of 37 points in only 22 games in the 2011-12 season. The Pens also have another superstar forward James Neal, who ended the season 7th in the league in scoring with 40 goals, 41 assists, and 81 points.

In the first game of the series on April 11th in Pittsburgh at the Consol Energy Center, Pittsburgh had a 3-0 lead. The Flyers to everybody’s surprise made the epic comeback and won in overtime with a goal by J.Voracek.

In game #2 the Flyers once again came back from behind this time from a 2 goal deficit. It was not Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury’s best night as he let in 7 goals in an 8-5 loss. (The 8th goal was an empty net goal.)

And finally in the third game of the series on Sunday, the Pens once again scored the first goal of the game for the third time in the series but of course the Flyers came back. At the end of 2nd period the Flyers had put in 6 goals and had the lead. Finally going into the third period the Penguins gave the hook to Fleury after letting a few bad goals and the Penguins put in backup goaltender, Brent Johnson. Then about 30 seconds into the 3rd, Jaromir Jagr made a nice play to get it to Giroux to score his 4th of the playoffs on the first shot on Johnson of the game. The Flyers ended the game with a 8-4 win.

I think that the problem with the Pens is that first of all the star goaltender Fleury is not performing and is letting in weak goals. Also the main reason that the Penguins are not winning is that their star players such as Malkin and Crosby have not been big factors at all in this series. They’re not on their game because they are fighting, as we saw in Game 3 in Philly where Crosby got into a fight with Claude Giroux.

So the main point is that the Penguins must get on their game and stop with the fighting and score some more goals.